Galaxy Sage, I hope it was a good choice! Looking forward to learning the age old skill of archery

Asymmetrical horn composite bow by Jaap Koppedrayer (51# at 28.5". 40° F. 86% humidity)

Gold Tip Traditional Classic XT

15 yards

I’ve been shoot for about 2 years and never had anyone check my form.

Jaap Kortweg won the Dutch nationals for wooden bows again this year with one of his wooden selfbows. They are essentially a piece of timber from his garden with a handle cut out, and two bamboo branches tied to it with rope. Gotta love it.

Photo credits: MaxDijk Fotografie

More photo’s here: https://handboogsport.smugmug.com/Traditioneel/NK-Hout-2024

Some clever draw method going on here…

Made some new arrows for my English longbow, weight & spine matched and incredibly fast, makes shooting at 50 yards a breeze 😁🏹💪🏻

I gotta get something off my chest; this is a gripe I have with online military history nerds (or at least people who play Mordhau/Chivalry) who view their favorite military units as gigantic gods among men and not ordinary humans who either volunteered or were pressed into military service.

Thanks to fantasy fiction like Lord of the Rings and D&D, the trope of short, skinny archers killing monsters with powerful bows exists. In recent years people in online history-focused communities have pushed back on this trope, highlighting the fact that archers pulling 100+ pound bows needed to be strong, which is absolutely true. This pushback has unfortunately over-corrected (in my opinion) to the point that when people talk about English Longbowmen, they act like these archers were all 6’5” giants with the build of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The replies to this post in r/AskHistorians do a good job of explaining which men were recruited as longbowmen, and the answer tended to be anyone who was able bodied and could use their weapon effectively. There was no height/weight standard enforced, and the average height for an English male during the time period when the longbow was relevant was roughly 5’7” or 5’8”. One of the longbowmen they reconstructed the skeleton of from the wreck of the Mary Rose was 5’9”, for instance. What is universal about these archers is the fact that they were robustly proportioned from a lifetime of practice with heavy bows.

In modern times, you see archers like Joe Gibbs and Justin Ma shooting 120# plus bows despite the fact that neither of them are large men. They have trained themselves physically and use proper technique to use these bows effectively without injuring themselves.

I think it’s interesting that you don’t see this discussion as much with asiatic archery, in fact some people act surprised when they learn that Chinese soldiers and Japanese samurai used to shoot very heavy bows on par with English Longbows in weight. Some English Longbow fanboys act like their favorite bow was the only type of warbow to ever exist, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Don’t mistake this criticism as hatred for longbows, I love them too, but certain people have a fixation on longbows that borders on weird.

Rant over.

Edit: grammar

Ash wood, 30" draw length @ 68-69 spine. Sealed in spar urethane. Spliced, right wing right offset fletching. Thread wrapped with waxed Irish linen thread. Sharpened the points to a fine polish myself.

Not bad for a newbie

Please ignore how rough and messy it’s looking, this was just a proof of concept for myself 👌

I personally find shield cut fletches a tad boring so I made myself a template of a different profile fletch, I think it looks pretty cool with an offset, what do you guys think ?? 🏹

So tell me, what am I not doing and what am I doing correctly. Feel like my second shot I twitch before release, but I promise you that was a decent hit on the target.